By Lucy

Days in England: 4

Friday was a rest day. Rich had an eleven hour shift, so I slept in, had canned soup for lunch, and played video games with Damocles into the evening. Rich was an absolute sweetheart and came home with pizza, little chocolates, fudge and a jar of onions in balsamic vinegar.

This morning he was up before me again – that sleepless night on the plane still coming back to bite me. I’ve got an alarm set for 7 and I’ll be back to it pretty soon. We had breakfast and hit the road early for Rochester. He discovered he can buy a pass for two, which means less hassle getting on the bus but also zero chance I lose my ticket again.

We took the bus down to Rochester, which, if you couldn’t figure it out from the multiple signs on every wall, is where Dickens’ lived, breathed, shit, walked down the road, and eventually died (not in that order). We started out on Rochester High Street, which is the picture perfect British cobbled road, with quaint stores and gas lamps on both sides.

We ducked into a few shops; a sweet shop, a dinosaur shop, and a bookstore.

The sweet shop was a microcosm of Britain to me; stuff crammed in everywhere. Somehow I’ve ended up staying with an hour walk of where Dickens’ lived, a Napoleonic fort, and a Norman fort, because Britain is just stuffed to the gills with several thousand years of cobblestones and beer history.

The bookstore was more for the giggles; I don’t find joy in perusing a bookstore, because I can’t justify buying any more books. I was surprised by how far back the store went.

The dinosaur store was great! Most people don’t know this, but back when I was an innocent girl, I wanted to be an archeologist because I loved dinosaurs. But then they made me practical and cynical and logical and I don’t need to sing the song again. I really wanted to buy one of the Megalodon teeth, but I have to be cautious about how much I bring back.

The next stop was a collection of Charles Dickens’ buildings along High Street. Eastgate House, and also the chalet that Dickens’ died in. Which seems to be its only claim to fame. It’s not even at the same location, they moved it, which seems to have caused some sort of structural problem because it’s been propped up by some scaffolding, like every odd building in England. There was also this well pump he had installed, and a little garden to sit in.

We went to one museum that was closed, so Rich took me to another one (a street with two museums!) called the Guildhall museum. The lady who greeted us asked if we’ve visited before, and Rich called me a ‘random Canadian’ before telling her he used to visit all the time “because it was warm and free”. So we ribbed him a bit for that before he stomped off in a fake huff.

There was a little bit of everything in there. Some bits about Dickens and his childhood in the Medway area, some natural history stuff. A section about the boats called “hulks”, because the tiny island of rain and misery ran out of places to store poor people before they discovered Australia. After all, it’s not like they store people on engineless boats anymore…

After we finished at the museum, we stopped at a cafe (tea room?) called Tiny Tim’s and ordered what the British call a ‘cream tea’. This is one of the things I’ve been salivating about since I arrived here. A cream tea is nothing more than a teapot with tea of your choice, a couple of scones, a pot of jam and a pot of clotted cream. However, it speaks to a cultural difference – the idea of just popping down to the shop to sit with your friends for a couple of hours, have some tea, eat a scone and chat. There used to be a tea room on the waterfront in Barrie called English and Miller, but they closed 6-odd years ago and no one replaced them.

Refreshed, we walked down the river Medway to the bridge near Rochester castle. Built in 1087 to repel Norman raids (also known as Norsemen or Vikings), the castle was consistently occupied until the 1500’s, when it was gutted by an accidental fire and abandoned. In 1870 it was privately purchase and turned into a public park, before being purchased by the city and turned into a historical monument.

It’s really just a giant stone square, with notches in the walls for where the timbers for the floors and ceilings went, but it was still a tall building it an impressive view.

I noticed a lot of the museums and forts and castle have a ticket price that is around 10 bucks Canadian, and lasts for a year. It’s a good idea – lots of tourists will fund it, and the locals don’t have to worry about paying some exorbitant rate to visit a beautiful locale. I’ve already been thinking about visiting Fort Amherst just to get out and walk somewhere when Rich is at work.

Next to Rochester Castle is Rochester cathedral, which is prettier but also more boring. Just a bunch of dusty old bones and some pretty gilt. There was also this “catalpa tree”, which was fenced off and propped up without much of an explanation as to why it is special.

As we finished up at the Cathedral, one of Rich’s friends texted him and asked to meet me, the one and only Lucy *jazz hands*. [Editors Note: Turns out I have friends that take an interest in my life and I may have banged on constantly for the 2 and a bit months since the tickets had been purchased that she was coming and I was very excited] We met up with her at the British equivalent of Tim Hortons, Whetherspoons, and I had something else I had been itching to try; Quorn! Specifically, imitation chicken nuggets. I have no issues with slaughtering animals (humanely) but the fact is our current way of farming is not sustainable. I like Quorn because it’s as close as we’ve gotten to growing sheets of protein in a lab and pressing it into a form that resembles meat. You can’t buy it in Canada because the package says it’s made of mushrooms, which it isn’t, technically – it’s ‘microfungus’, like a lichen – so Canada decided it’s false advertising. For what it’s worth, they weren’t bad. They did not taste or have the mouthfeel of meat, but I wasn’t unhappy with eating them plain. I continue to be amused by things on menus labelled “American-style”.

Sunday will be another chill day, but Monday we are going to do a tour of the tunnels, and the Royal Engineers museum! Stay tuned!